Good People Don't Get Happy Endings
by Sylphie3000
Summary: Three times he's met this kid. Once he died, twice...well, he didn't. So that's something. (I meant to write a happy thing, I swear I did. But as it is...Main Character Death Ahead.)
1. Genocide

**A/N: So, this started out on two a.m on the day I beat my first playthrough of Undertale. You can probably point out where I got completely exhausted, because I tend to wax poetic when I'm tired. Either way, likes and reviews are always nice. Thanks!**

The first time he sees them, their eyes are open and probing, searching. Shoulders tense, stick held like a guard, the knuckles that wrap around it white and shaking from the effort. There's a knife in the waistband of the kid's shorts. Plastic, not very sharp. Probably why they're using the stick.

He can tell from both the shakily erratic breathing and the trail that follows in their footsteps from the end of the stick that this child will not be a good one, and that his whoopie-cushion-in-the-hand-joke will not be appreciated.

He makes it anyway-because hey, it's not like he has anybody _else_ to joke with now.

When he speaks, the stick lashes out before the small body turns, the tip of it just grazing his shirt as he jumps back in a neat dodge. The face follows soon after, expression filled with a terrified rage and contorted shout of surprise.

"Well, friend-o," he says, cool as ever, straightening his jacket and silently thanking his quick reflexes. "That's not how you greet a new buddy, is it?"

The face stares up at him as the kid sinks into a defensive stance, teeth bared like a wild animal.

"Let's try this again. How d'you greet a new pal, pal?"

No answer from the child. No movement of any kind, save their shallow, rapid breathing.

 _Damn, those eyes are creepy_ , he thinks, and abandoning all good sense he holds out his hand.

"You shake 'is hand," he says, hand still extended, whoopie cushion hidden in the folds of his jacket sleeve, awaiting the perfect reveal.

The kid doesn't laugh.

They reach out to grab his hand, looking all the while like they're expecting to be attacked, and as the incredible noise that is whoopie cushion fades into the forest, the kid doesn't even fuckin' _smile_.

Really, after a meeting like that, he shouldn't have been surprised at the reek of singed fur at the ruins, at the oppressive silence that now coats the place like the snow. At the trail of dust leading to Waterfall, at the deaths of both Undyne and his brother.

Shouldn't be surprised at his rage, a monster of a thing manifested in the clenching of a fist around a dust-stained scarf, the gritting of teeth and blue in a room that mimics what was supposed to be a sunset. His grief, a thing made physical in the blood darkened, tear tracked lines of his skull, a triumph turned fear turned determination as _this kid steps over where their body had/never been to fight him again._

"Hey, buddy," he says, brushing his fingers off on the hood of his jacket. The blood that had been there a moment ago no longer stains the bone or fabric, and for that he's grateful. "You look like you've been havin' a bad time. You really wanna go there again?"

The question isn't really a question, but the punk answers anyways-a twirl of that plastic knife, sharpened to a point in the caves of Waterfall, is all it takes.

Sans smiles, blue and white bones flashing into existence around the kid like a promise.

* * *

Death, when it comes, as he knew it would, is the comforting warmth of Grillby's, the chuckle of his brother beside him, the tang of ketchup and knock on his shoulder by one Captain-Of-The-Royal-Guard that makes him spill it all over his jacket.

 _Leave it to the other Sans-es,_ he thinks, tilting his bottle back once again. _Lemme have my peace._


	2. Neutral

**A/N: Hey again, guys! I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that gave me feedback, here and on Tumblr! I live off that kind of thing. Also, because I am the human embodiment of anxiety and awkwardness, I'm not going to PM you, so I'll just thank you up here...where it's safe.  
**

 **Also, I realize that there were some inconsistencies with the last chapter, and I fixed those. I went headcannoning, and it didn't seem to go over well. And I, uh, conviniently forgot that Monsters don't bleed. Regardless, enjoy! Feedback is like a drug. You should hook me up.**

* * *

The second time he meets them, he almost kills them on principal. They don't see the razor-sharpened bones that float, hidden, in the dark woods around them, but trust him, they're there.

He checks the ruins to find no scorch marks, checks the child's footsteps to find no dust between the imprints.

He follows them, watches them until they reach his brother's gate. They seem...small. Nervous. In awe at the cavern's ceiling. _Determined,_ but not in the way the other kid had been. This one's—dare he say it— _kind._

When he speaks, the child turns around before they're supposed to, which is weird, but they answer with a happy _hello_ and seem more than eager to shake his hand.

He notices a trace amount of dust under their fingernails when they set off the whoopie cushion. His eyes flick to theirs, and they retract their hand to hide it in the folds of their sweater.

This kid, except for the dust, is nice, and fun, and all those other things they weren't before. They play with Papyrus, shocking themselves on purpose so he gets a kick out of it. They genuinely laugh at all his bad puns, hurl a not-so-discreet snowball at his back when he's not looking, eat snow until their fingers redden and proclaim how different it is from the stuff on the surface.

There's no trail of dust and discarded items.

There's no red scarf in the snow, no forgotten armor.

He keeps his promise to the jokester from the ruins and keeps a watchful eye socket on the kid as they journey through the Underground. He watches as they face off against Woshua, stay polite and cheerful around Onionsan, hug Alphys and best Mettaton by giving him the highest ratings Underground TV has ever fucking _seen_. Never once do they kill, never once do they carry anything other than a stick.

It's so...different. _They're_ different. It's unnerving.

He takes the kid to dinner, gets 'em a popcorn shrimp basket, pours himself a tall glass of ketchup, and they sit. Make small talk, bad puns, the works. All throughout, the human gets more and more uncomfortable.

"Hey, S-Sans," they stutter, looking down at their plate. Their face is a weird red color—is it supposed to do that?

"Yeah, kid?"

He gives them a moment to gather themselves, to prepare for whatever grandiose statement they have to throw at him.

"I-uh...I…" they stammer.

He holds up a hand. "Whatever's gotcha all up in a knot, buddy—"

"Sans-about...about the dust—"

"Hey," he says, and the kid only stops when the room flashes blue for a second. "Let's wait on that, a'ight? We'll talk about it, but not here. You'll get judged soon enough. "

At the look of sudden panic on the humans' face, he laughs. "Hey, amigo, I'm just jokin'. Don't worry about it. But yeah no, we'll talk about it later, okay? Let's just eat. Enjoy our time, you know. All that fun stuff."

The human had calmed down after that, but Sans left disturbed. There was dust, _old_ dust, in their nails, on their palms, smudging everything they touched with just a little.

That, and well, he'd just told a blatant lie. This kid is gonna get _judged_ , and no amount of frustrating cuteness or kindness is going to change that.

This is the kid that killed/spared his _brother_ , for fuck's sake.

So Sans goes to the hall. And he waits. And waits, and waits. Takes a nap or two, spins his bones in lazy circles just to see the room light up a nonthreatening blue. It's not the funnest thing ever, but it's alright.

He waits until the child shows up, bedraggled and bruised, eyes haunted in an eerily familiar way. When they see him, standing there like the goddamn angel of death at the end of the hall, their face breaks out into a smile and they run over, clutching him into a hug.

He doesn't jerk away, but he doesn't embrace them, either. He just pats them on the back while the kid goes on about, for some heartbreaking reason, the Queen's dead kids. He lets them talk themselves out, nodding in the right places but not paying attention. This is a story he knows well.

"S-sans, it was…"

"Yeah, kiddo, I know. It sucks. And I'm sorry, I really am, but it's about to suck even more." As he speaks, he pulls himself out of the kid's grasp and turns away. His footsteps echo on the marble floor as he walks a reasonable distance before turning back, slow and deliberate.

"Sans?" The kid's confused, looking up at him with bright, sad eyes. The skeleton sighs.

"Look, kid, this isn't gonna be fun. I _know_ it's not," Sans says, pinching the bridge of his nose, "but I need ya to tell me about the dust on your hands."

The kid looks away. "Oh."

"Well?"

They stall, staring at their hands. "I-I can't tell you how many times I've washed these things," they say, their voice rising with giggles-they're almost hysterical. "It was a...Froggit, in th-the Ruins. T-Toriel had left, I didn't know what to do, Sans, I was so scared a-and I hadn't saved, I didn't know I _could_ , and it k-kept jumping, and I j-j- _just_ …" they cover their eyes with the heels of their hands and cry, the sobs echoing around the room.

Sans didn't move, didn't breathe. The kid continued to cry.

Finally, after minutes of waiting, the kid cries themselves out, and in a shaky, exhausted voice, speaks again.

"Do you know how many times I've washed these things?" They say again, and hold their palms out to him for a moment before letting their arms fall limply to their side. "It doesn't come off. Undyne…" they look away again, towards the window. "She saw my hands, and tried to kill me. Came at me _screaming_ , asking if I _liked it when people didn't come home_." They clutch their stomach and give a single, dry sob. "I feel my sins. They're crawling on my back, Sans."

"Oh, jeez, kid," he breathes. "Where'd you learn _that_ phrase?"

The human jerks their head up, eyes wide, and then looks away again, shamefaced. "When I found a knife in the Ruins. It made me sick. When Mom told me to never come back. When you asked me to shake your hand, when your brother took me on a date, when Undyne...well. But this whole time, anytime anything happens, I hear it. ' _You feel your sins crawling on your back._ ' And I do. They're so _heavy._ "

This wasn't the kid that had killed everyone he loved, Sans realizes. This is a child scared and confused, who had been attacked from every direction ever since falling down this godforsaken hole for whatever reason.

Sans steps forward, slippered feet smacking against the marble as he walks to stand in front of the tiny human. "Kid."

They don't answer.

He grabs their chin and gently pulls their face up. They stare over his shoulder, eyebrows knit and eyes red.

"Kid, I wouldn't normally say this, but…" The skeleton sighs, letting go of their chin and looking at the ground between their feet. "You can...fix this. It was a mistake, a...ah, shit, kid, you were _scared_. Jus'—do you wanna—" He stops, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand. He'd never tried to _explain_ a reset before, much less encourage it. He'd never had reason to do anything other than prevent it

"What?"

"Do you want...a do-over? A second chance?"

The hope that cracks over the kid's face breaks his fuckin' heart. Because _of course_ they do—with what they just told him, they'd do anything to get that weight off their back.

The child doesn't say anything, just stares at him with those huge, pleading eyes. He sighs, letting the wave of guilt come crashing down. He'd just signed a death sentence to the whole Underground. Like, two-hundred-fifty-four-tuple suicide, all for a kid that's killed/spared them all anyways.

Well, nobody ever said he was _smart_ for a skeleton. Just lazy. Just Sans, good with puns and a whoopie cushion.

He takes a deep breath, looks the kid up and down.

"Well," he says, letting it hang in the air between them.. "Do ya want it or not?"

* * *

Death this time was not something he expected, but when it comes he's holding a small, battered soul in the palm of one hand, letting the little red thing warm him from the inside out. It's a moment of panic when the world starts to unravel like so much thread before the static of the universe comes crashing in and he knows nothing, nothing but the blackness

—and the white of Snowdin, and the walking cacophony that is his brother, and exactly two days before the human arrives.

Sans blinks away the glare, feeling something akin to fire heat him from his soul outwards, the echo of what had/never been sounding from the trees, the cavernous ceiling, the ground beneath his feet:

" _Jus' make it better this time, yeah? No killin' anyone. Jus' be happy, be the kid we all love."_

" _I promise."_


	3. Pacifist

**A/N: I'm so, so sorry. I really am. I meant to write a happy thing. I _wanted_ to write a happy thing.**

 **Instead, I get to give you a warning: Main Character death ahead, as well as VERY SAD SKELETONS.**

 **Also, actual note: FFN has weird formatting involving Sans' boldfaced speech, so I had to change it from how it was previously. Parts of words kept getting deleted, and I can't figure it out. This site is odd and also the bane of my existence.**

 **Edits made on Feb. 1 to the 1st and 3rd chapters. Formatting and some sentences restructured. And thanks to everyone who's reviewed/followed/favorited! Honestly, it's so unironically nice to have my math class interrupted with reviews and the like (no sarcasm). I'm sick right now, so it really made my morning.**

* * *

The two days pass exactly as they always do, time split between his brother, sentry work, the probably-failing telescope business, and Grillby's.

At exactly four-o-three on the day, he waits, hidden in the trees, magic pulsing underneath his bones.

At four-o-five he hears it: the door to the Ruins, opening for the first time in God-knows-when, followed by a surprised gasp and a squeal of laughter.

 _Laughter. Laughter's good_ , he thinks as the kid bolts into the snow, picking chunks of it up with their bare hands and throwing it around. They're not even carrying a stick this time, but the bandaid on their cheek and lips covered in the sticky remnants of a Monster Candy tells him their trek hasn't been easy.

He follows them for a bit, watching from the shadows as the human goes from joyous and playful to shivering and sniffling. Even as far back as he is, he can hear the chatter of their teeth, and they don't seem to notice the stick he breaks.

When they reach the "prison" his brother built, he appears behind them and speaks.

" **Huma** **n**."

They tense, but do not turn around. The skeleton smiles and in a low, leisurely voice, continues.

"Do ya' know how'ta greet a new friend?"

The kid whirls around, hand outstretched to him. The grin on their face almost...reminds him of something, but he can't place what. "You shake their hand!"

Their hand stays extended, the grin solidly in place. It's red with cold, but soft and clean. No dust hides in the nails or soft crevices of their palm.

They're safe.

After the joke (to which the human laughs like no other), Sans chuckles and lifts the kid onto his shoulders with a flick of his wrist. It's not that they _deserve_ it, but they _do_ seem to be keeping the promise they had/never given him, in that other timeline.

Before the reset. The first reset _any_ Sans had _ever_ instigated.

He grimaces at the memory, suppressing a shudder so the kid doesn't know what's up.

And besides, he's a good judge of character. Most of the time, anyways, and where _he_ fails, his brother comes through in spades.

"Come on, kid," he says, the smile on his face growing wider with the child's surprised giggles. "Let's get you hid. My brother, Papyrus, now he's a human-hunting _fanatic…_ "

* * *

The longer he watches this kid, the more fond of them he becomes. He interrupts their date with his brother with incidental trombone music, follows their treck through Waterfall (isn't it strange how they _know_ the answers to the puzzles, before they even come across them?), roots for them in their flee from Undyne. It takes so much longer than it did any other time, but he's grateful. Which is strange; gratitude isn't something Sans has felt for a long time.

Whenever he comes across them, they somehow wind up back at Grillby's, eating fries and ketchup and talking about everything from stars to souls.

"Hey, Sans," they say in one such meeting. The clatter of glasses and the dull roar of both the jukebox and the drunks make it difficult to be heard this late in the evening, but the bar is a better place than anywhere for a nice plate of food and (generally) good company.

"Yeah?" the skeleton responds through a mouthful of fries and ketchup. "Wat'cha need?"

"Is it okay if I…um…"

"Spit it out, kid, these bones don't have all night."

He watches from the corner of his eye as the kid looks away, staring for a moment at Doggo in the corner before letting their vision pan around the bar and back to him. They seem...sad? He's not sure-human faces are too fleshy for him to figure out. He downs a shot of ketchup as a chaser for his fries while the kid stares at him, expression unreadable.

"Kid?" He asks, completely concerned now. He faces them, abandoning his food and giving full attention to the little human in front of him.

"Do you…" they start, closing their eyes a moment before blurting out, "Do you want to see the surface? Like, _really_ want to see it?"

Sans' soul drops somewhere around his pelvis. Out of all questions from the cheery child, _this_ wouldn't be one of them. He starts to speak a couple times, but words fail him. The kid grows more upset the more he tries, until he finally gets out, "what? Where's this comin' from, huh?"

They look at their lap, their brown mop of hair obscuring their features as they fiddle with their thumbs. "It's a simple yes or no question, Sans. Please," they say, barely loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the bar.

He takes a breath and leans back in his chair, eyes flicking from the ceiling to the child and back again while he thinks. "Well, yeah, I guess," he says after a moment. "Everybody does. Fresh air, and breeze, and trees so big they scrape the sky...that's what everyone says, at least. It's a hope, and probably better than, well, _here._ But kid, that doesn't answer my question: where's all this comin' from?"

The human doesn't answer, instead opting to ignore him while they thought. Finally, they look at him, their grin so big it hurts his soul.

"Well then, Sansy," they chirp, and grab his hand. The skin against his bone is warm, and soft, and he wants to hide this little thing away where no one can find them because if they go to Asgore they _will_ die, make no bones about it.

"I'll make sure you get to see all that, okay? Just leave it to me." They hop down from their bar chair and wrap a quick hug around his legs before weaving their way through the crowd. Halfway through, they turn back and yell, "and make sure to save enough money for Papyrus! He's always wanted to race!" before bolting out the door.

Sans sits in the dim, comfortable lights of his favorite place in the Underground, staring in confusion and more than a bit of fear at the door where the human left until his brother comes to get him. He doesn't know how long he's been there, but when he leaves, the lights lining the trees and buildings are dimmer in a simulated night.

* * *

He doesn't see them again until the least favorite part of his job comes. He stands and waits, motionless and emotionless in that long hall, where he's killed countless versions of the same human that is coming to face him now.

When they enter the hall, slow and limping and covered with burns, his soul stops. Unlike other timelines, where he'd waited for the human to get to get to _him_ out of apathy or laziness, now he's frozen to the spot as the child limps to him, head down, grunting with the effort.

" **Hey, kid,** " he says, voice hollow and growing more lifeless with the echo. Their head jerks up and their eyes meet his empty sockets.

"Hey, Sansy," they manage, their voice barely hiding a whine. "I uh… ran out of gold," they chuckle. "I'm trying to make it to the next…"

Sans waits a beat for the kid to continue before taking a breath. "D'ya mean the save, kid?" He asks, even though he knows the answer.

Saying the human is shocked would be an understatement. "H-how do you…" they stammer.

"I know a lot of things," he replies. "How'd you get like that, though? Why not just go back and try again?"

The kid shrugs, using the movement to try and hide a wince. Sans huffs and looks at the ceiling, the windows-really, anywhere but the burned, bloody train wreck that this kid has become. How're they're still alive is beyond him.

"Look, pal," he says, impatient now. "I can't help if you're not going to talk."

"I don't _need_ help, Sans. I'm fine, just a little banged up, s'all. I've gotten worse from Undyne."

He raises a brow at that and makes a show of looking the kid up and down. "That doesn't seem like 'fine' to me, kiddo. Look, there's a save right before here, let's just go and use _that_ , okay? Patch ya right up." One flash of blue and a surprised squeal later, he's carrying a protesting, squirming human back down the hall.

He shouldn't be able to see the glimmer that surrounds a SAVE, but it reacts to the kids determination and glows brighter the closer they get. When the brightness is engulfing, he uses his magic to set the kid on the ground.

"Here we are," he says, ignoring his friend's glare. "Now SAVE. I'll be right here, so don't even _think_ about runnin' off." Not that they could regardless, in the state they're in.

He looks away while the kid does their thing, however reluctantly they do it, and soon enough a scowling, pale kid steps beside him. They're healed, but the sure as hell don't seem happy about it.

"Done?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now, buddy. Pal. Amigo," Sans drawls, eyes down to pinpricks as he gazes at them in his peripherals. "What the _hell_ was that about?"

The human takes a moment to answer, and when they do it's terrifying. "I just wanted to see how far I can make myself go. I'm outta gold-didn't lie there, and...Alphys told me. Undyne told me. Asgore needs my soul. And I… I'm going to give it to him."

Sans sucks in a breath, feeling his soul grow hollow with dread. "Kid…"

"No, look, Sans," they say, voice filled with determination. "You want to see the sunlight, and the trees. Alphys wants to study the stars, Mettaton wants to _be_ a star… I'm going to free you. I _want_ to."

"Can I change your mind?" He asks, voice quiet and eyes hollow. After all the things this kid has been through, he doesn't want them to go.

The human looks at them, their tiny face so different than it was just a couple days ago in Grillby's. Their eyes are hard, cheekbones sharp through their skin, stance not unlike Undyne's.

Human expressions have always been difficult for him, but he doesn't have to know what a pout or vague disappointment look like to see the answer in the kid's eyes.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Thought so. Hoped not, but...still."

Silence rings between the two for a long while before the skeleton breaks it.

"Kid."

"Yeah?"

"...Thank you."

"Anytime, Sansy."

He smiles at the familiar nickname, and lets the silence fall between them once more.

* * *

After a time he doesn't know or care about, the two stand. Sans doesn't know _how_ they had both wound up propped against a wall, leaning on each other, but they did.

It was…nice.

For a last meeting.

Sans stretches the stiffness from his bones while the kid dusts themselves off. A quick, normal moment much like others the two have shared, but this one Sans wants to save. He would rather be here in this damn hall, sitting with the human, for an entire lifetime than let them die.

"Kid," he says, voice barely more than a whisper. He couldn't make himself louder if he tried. That kind of thing's hard to do when the entirety of his soul feels empty and silent. "Wanna ride?"

"Nah. Rather walk. I wanna-" they choke, the first show of emotion they've given him all day. "I wanna...savor this. I wanna live, for a bit longer."

And with that, they begin to walk, leaving the skeleton to follow.

* * *

He asks them if they're scared.

"Of course," they reply with a shrug. "I'm going to die. It's only natural."

He tells them they don't have to do this.

"But I do," they say, looking up at their friend through floppy brown bangs.

He tells them that everyone loves them.

"That's why I have to do it, Sans. I love them, too."

They don't speak again until the end of the hall.

* * *

When the human says goodbye, Sans says nothing. He waves slowly, an action stopped as soon as they run off into the next room. His arm is suddenly too heavy to hold.

His everything is too heavy to hold.

Magic is harder to do when a monster's soul isn't in it, but after an hour he decides he can't just stand there anymore, waiting for a human who will never come back. The room flashes blue, and Sans is sucked into the Void, an indecipherable mess of binary and code flashing around him.

 _All that pain, and for what?_ He thinks, walking through the Void until he feels his room materialize around him. _It didn't do anything._ He sits on his bed, head in his hands, iron springs squeaking with his weight. Defeated. _It didn't matter when they killed everyone, and it didn't matter when I helped them reset. None of it._

Sans heaves a huge sigh, curling his hands into fists and pressing them into his eye sockets. _Is a god damn happy ending too much to ask for?_ He thinks, wincing at the loudness of his soul. _Because it's really beginning to seem like it is_.

He doesn't know how long he stays like that, on his bed, head in his hands. When he finally stands, all he knows that his brother is worried, and the barrier has been broken.

The human is nowhere to be found.

Papyrus doesn't understand where they went, or why they're suddenly being hailed as a hero, but he's in tears for days.

The rest of their friends aren't any better. Alphys and Mettaton aren't seen for...shit, he doesn't know, but it's a _long time_. They don't answer their phone, or messages, or their front door. Mettaton takes a leave of mourning from TV, and when he comes back he's acting, and for the first time everyone can tell. Undyne is pissed; she can't stop moving, every word is either a sob or a growl. The first time she saw Sans, she almost killed him.

"You could have stopped them!" she screamed, holding the small skeleton off the ground by the collar of this shirt.

"No," he answered, voice hollow. Pap had stared, shocked-it was the first time his brother had spoken in _days_.

Undyne had dropped him unceremoniously to the ground a moment later. She had seen the look in the skeletons eyes, and it scared her.

* * *

Monsters move to the surface over a period of years. Sans is the last to go, after Toriel. Undyne had been one of the first to leave, going with that child-killing bastard monsters call a King to oversee the process. Papyrus went on ahead of him to get their new home ready, and Alphys and Mettaton were constantly back and forth, moving their lab equipment and research, or business and personal effects respectively.

He wants to go, to feel the sun on his face and see the sky for the first time in this life. He just...can't. He's stuck. He sits in the now-abandoned Grillby's, chugging a bottle of ketchup, wishing with all his soul that the human was back. Everyone is happy now-they got to go _outside_. They get to _leave_. It's everything monsters had ever wanted, everything the human had ever worked for.

They should've gotten to see it.

Instead, their soul is sitting in a jar somewhere, fragile and red and hurting, because of _him_.

Because _he_ couldn't stop them.

Because _he wanted to see the fucking sky_.

He doesn't even notice he's thrown the glass ketchup bottle until he hears it shatter against the far wall, red semi-liquid glistening in the dim lights of the once-cozy bar. His breath heaves, his soul burns.

Sans has felt this sort of rage before. It manifested in bones through a torso, blood spatter on a blue sweater, the small comfort of a red scarf underneath a jacket.

Now, he's ready to avenge all that.

The bar, once filled with patrons, lights up blue and it's empty.

* * *

The throne room, when Sans arrives, is empty. Light streams in thick golden rays from holes in Ebbot's ceiling, making the dust that covers the throne all the more apparent.

Sans walks through the throne room, the New Home, the halls and labyrinths of the Castle. He walks slowly, with a purpose.

These are the last steps the human took before they died.

Before they gave themselves up.

He's probably being too...angsty about this, or something, but he doesn't really give a damn. The kid was his _friend_ , for fuck's sake. The two of them have been through too much shit too many times for him to just let a sacrifice _drop_. It's rare he loses this friendship. Each time it hurts the same.

Where the Barrier once stood is now a bright blue, a swatch of sky. It's startling in it's intensity-it's more than he _ever_ thought it would be.

He turns away, staring into the Underground for a long, long while.

An indeterminable amount of time passes before he hears footsteps behind him, heavy and unsure.

He knows who it is before they even speak. Even so, he stays silent, despite the buzzing of rage in his bones.

"Sans," the King of all Monsters says, his deep voice hesitant and sad, and Sans has to force his magic to stay within his marrow.

"Kid killer," he replies, flippant and callous, cold even. He hears the King's intake of breath and counts this as a victory.

"Sans, I had no choice-"

" **You had every choice** ," Sans growls, eyes empty pits. " _Every_ choice. You didn't _have_ to kill them, _any of them_."

"And what was I to do? Let every monster in all the Underground wither away and die? I could not."

Sans spins on a gold piece and the room brightens with the color of the human's shirt as the King is pulled down to the smaller skeleton's eye level.

"Look, you sick son of a bitch," he snarls, watching Asgore's eyes light with fear with the same kind of glee he associates with human blood on tile. "You killed _children_. Who'd done nothing wrong. Who fell down a fuckin' _hole in the ground_. You are a vile, twisted monster. You're the kind of person human children _hide from_. And worst of all, Asgore, you murderer…" he stops, eyes going blank as the King catches himself, "you killed my _friend_. And for that, King or not, **I will never forgive you.** "

The King stands with as much dignity as he can muster while Sans turns away. "Go. I'll watch this godforsaken hole in the ground. My brother's outside, my friends are happy, and I can see the sky and feel the air. That's what they worked for," the skeleton says, voice drifting down to a murmur the longer he talks. He's exhausted now that all the rage has gone out of him.

Sans waits ten seconds before repeating his order. Reluctantly, the King turns away, back towards the open air. Before he leaves his former home, he turns back to see the small skeleton watching him, face impassable. Asgore heaves a sigh, and calls to his once-subject.

"Sans."

The skeleton doesn't answer. Really, he just wants the King to _leave_ already, so he can go back to Snowdin and start an indoor garden. Or...something. He doesn't know, but he's not leaving the Underground. He can't. Not after everything.

"They -the human, that is- they wanted me to tell you. Their name. Frisk."

Sans hangs his head, shoulders slumping, one had brought to his face and he _laughs_. A cold, hollow, broken sound that would move the heart of any that heard it, human or monster.

" **Thank** **s** ," he heaves out, voice choked with something thick and too hot.

The King turns once more, and says, "and Sans, the souls? They're in the coffins, down the hall. All seven of them. Take care of them. Take care of _yourself_."

And with that, the King is gone. A moment later, so is Sans.

* * *

The caskets are moved one by one to the basement of his home, so he can better keep watch. Sometimes, he cleans them, or reads to the souls trapped inside. He doesn't leave the Underground, instead opting to let his friends and brother visit _him_ and host travellers or tourists. Soon, a small town springs to life in the skeletal city surrounding the Castle, and the Mettaton Hotel reopens, but Sans is in charge and lives in Snowdin, and everybody knows it.

* * *

The third time he met this kid, he should've just killed them. It would have been easier that way.

They should have seen the sun and sky _together_ , not just from a square in a mountainside or the inside of a _coffin_.

Happy endings don't come to those who deserve them. It's a lesson this Sans learns well. One that he will-hopefully-not pass on to those who follow.

Because there _is_ a reset. There always is. He just has to wait a little longer for his friend to get the determination back to do so, that's all.


End file.
